


Heartache

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-04
Updated: 2012-09-04
Packaged: 2017-11-13 13:11:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lestrade gets shot. He didn't entirely anticipate Mycroft's reaction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartache

For a moment, it didn’t hurt.

Lestrade’d had half his attention on the surprisingly calm witness and the other half on calculating how long it would take to wrap up the scene so he could go home. He couldn’t quite remember when the witness – who’d grown more and more twitchy – had pulled the gun, only that there were two gunshots at the same time she bolted. He glanced down at the two, blossoming red spots on the right side of his chest and thought, _Damn, I liked that shirt._

And then he collapsed, trying to press both wounds and shouting for a medic and Christ had the ambulance left already that would be just his fucking luck now wouldn’t it—

“Oh, God, _sir_!” Sergeant Hopkins ran over, colour quickly draining from her face. It was actually surprising how much it hurt, he thought calmly, as Hopkins vacillated between shouting for help (“Officer down, multiple chest wounds, _we need an ambulance!_ ”) and telling him to stay calm—even though she looked more concerned than he felt, rather a bit odd, that—and to breathe and not go into the light and that he’d be just fine if he stayed with her.

“Hopkins, I’m not going to faint,” he said gruffly, letting his head fall back onto the harsh gravel. “Is the ambulance—” something _pulled_ at his right lung, sucking the air from it, and he started coughing, hard. Hopkins made a horrified, choked noise and redoubled her shouting effort; he thought he might be coughing up blood. The right side of his chest felt like it was stretched thin and taut over a bed of nails, all stabbing pain and fucking— _burning_ …

He didn’t faint, exactly, but the world seemed to center down on the _painpainpainburningstingingpullingohgodhelpmehelpme_ running around and around his brain in a terrifying loop.

The only recollection he had apart from that was the uncomfortable jolt of being lifted onto a stretcher, and the oxygen mask making it slightly easier to breathe. Hopkins was sitting in the corner of the ambulance, leg jiggling up and down with nervous energy, when the pain eased enough for a moment of clarity. She was on the phone—his phone—trying to sound calm and collected and managing only to sound like a shaky teenager.

“Yes, he’s on—Yes, I know that—If you could come, he’d—In the ambulance right now—He’s—Yes—” He closed his aching eyes and tried to remember who his first contact was.

\--

When he next opened his eyes, he was again lying down, but it felt… peculiar. He felt peculiar. Floaty. Dizzy. It was… what was it? The ceiling was too white. There was a tube down his throat. Another mask across his face. Lestrade shivered and closed his eyes again, feeling oddly detached. He could hear voices – “ _I’m sorry, sir, we’re only letting in relatives at the moment,”_ and a quiet, venomous reply…

Oh, yes, who was his contact? That was the question. Was it his wife—no, he didn’t have a wife anymore, did he. _Mycroft_ , he thought. Yes, he’d changed it a few days ago, hadn’t he? With the advent of their fifth anniversary, he’d thought it would be good to… to what? Something. Make it official, Mycroft had said… he thought. Or maybe it had been him. He didn’t… He wasn’t sure. Was this confusion from morphine or blood loss? He shivered again, and tried to stop his thoughts colliding noisily in his head by not thinking at all.

\--

By the time the drugs had worn off, day had slipped into night. There were machines beeping somewhere – although not near his bed – and far too many tubes lodged in his body. He blinked at the darkness, thought about trying to shuffle up higher on the bed, and immediately thought the better of it. He turned his head instead, only to see a darkened figure sitting in the chair next to the bed, face made eerily gaunt by the glow of a laptop.

“Good evening,” said Mycroft softly, continuing to type as if he were in his office rather than the ICU. “Or morning, to be exact.” Greg blinked again, and opened his mouth— “Kindly do not try to speak,” Mycroft cut in, voice even and neutral; “you are on a ventilator. I have been assured that you are perfectly able to breathe unassisted, and that it will be removed in the morning. I would offer you a cup of tea, but I am, at this point in time, remarkably angry, and the quality of the tea here is appalling. The funding for the NHS is terrible, have I ever told you? No, I suppose not; I hadn’t given it much thought before now. I’ve been clearing up something in Russia, but I think I shall give this my attention as well.” His rambling, fractious words were at odds to his seeming air of calm. Greg smiled, stretching out a hand towards the jittery bureaucrat. Mycroft eyed him for a moment, took it in a warm grip, and said, “Don’t think you’ll escape being lectured.”

 _Wouldn’t dream of it_ , Greg thought, grinning wanly. Mycroft stared at him for a while longer, brow furrowed, then returned to typing with his free hand. He fell asleep to the gentle pressure of Mycroft’s fingers, the pad of a thumb sliding across the skin of his palm and the comforting reassurance of another person's touch.

\--

Mycroft didn’t sleep. He told himself it was because of the work.

\--

It took quite a bit to alarm Mycroft Holmes; indeed, he could count the number of times he had felt genuine fear on one hand. In a rather interesting coincidence that meant nothing whatsoever he could assure you, they were all in situations where people close to him had been threatened.

It had taken him several moments to understand the shaky-voiced Sergeant, stuttering about DI Lestrade and how Mycroft was the first contact and—and—

“Do you mind telling me what this is about?” he asked, calmly cutting through her nonsensical mumbling. He felt ice grip at his chest—if he were more romantic, he might say his heart. Thankfully, he harboured no such trivial leanings as romanticism. “What appears to be the matter with the Inspector?”

The phone rushed with static as she took a deep breath, and replied more steadily, “He’s been shot, and he’s on his way to the hospital.” For a few moments, he did not – could not – think, and stared vacantly down at his desk. _Shot?_ No… “Hello? Are you there?”

“Yes, my apologies.” Mycroft’s voice was perfectly composed. “Where is he being taken?”

“Um, I don’t really—Royal London, I think—”

“Thank you. I will endeavour to be there shortly.” The woman said a few more things before hanging up; he wasn’t listening. Greg, he thought. Shot. If he were possessed of a vivid imagination, he might have wondered what his partner looked like, bleeding out onto an ambulance stretcher, possibly—most likely—almost definitely minutes away from death. It was strange, he thought, slipping his phone into his coat pocket. He paused, trying to decide what precisely was strange, and gave it up after a moment, calling for Anthea. Bosnia could wait for a few hours; there were measures that needed to be taken.

By an excellent coincidence, a leading gunshot trauma specialist was only too willing to cooperate after a vague mention about how _interesting_ his tax record was. Mycroft thought Greg would have been terribly disappointed in him. He stilled in the dark silence of the car; he was thinking of Greg as though he were dead already.

“Where is he currently?” he asked his assistant, continuing to stare into the ether.

It was a moment until she replied: “He’s in surgery right now, sir. It will be a few hours until he’s out, are you sure you don’t—”

“That will be all, thank you.” It was to her credit that she said nothing more to dissuade him. Nothing could, at that point. 

On the way to the hospital, his assistant tried to comfort him with survival percentages—“Over 80% of gunshot victims survive, sir.” He clenched his jaw and said nothing; eventually, she too lapsed into silence, frowning at her BlackBerry and glancing at him in what she probably thought was a discreet manner.

The hospital itself was a whirlwind of busy and – to him it seemed – deliberately unhelpful nurses, all the while his mind automatically processing the horrible disinfectant smell, the crying, the sneezing, the children screaming in pain as mothers tried to shush them, the distant, clinical beeping of machines, and the lingering sense of death. It was unmitigated chaos, and it was nearly all he could do to stop from walking out, frustrated as he was with the bored receptionist. _Greg_ , he thought. _For_ _Greg_.

Eventually the man deigned to direct him to the ICU waiting room. He found a highly uncomfortable chair and a pale-looking Sergeant who didn’t introduce herself and kept pacing. Mycroft found that even watching her was exhausting; he didn’t understand where she had acquired so much energy.

“Detective Sergeant Hopkins, I presume,” he said with the politest smile he could manage. She shook his hand with surprising force for someone so dainty. He waited for her to leave. When she didn’t, after ten minutes, he cleared his throat lightly; “You’re aware you may leave?”

Hopkins smiled at him tightly, continuing to pace. “If it’s all the same, Mr Holmes, I’d rather stay.”

“Sit down, then.”

She remained standing, a ball of nervous movement. After thirty minutes, it began to grate on his already delicate nerves. After three hours, he was a short phone-call away from having something drastic and permanent happen to her. Tea, which normally might have soothed him, didn’t aid the situation; it was cheap, terrible, and in a Styrofoam cup that did nothing but remind him of Greg. It was a horrifyingly sentimental display that he attributed to general shock, and nerves frayed near to breaking point, and if she screeched her shoes against the linoleum _one_ more time—

The light for the surgery flicked off.


End file.
